Hollywood has now suffered six big budget summer film flops after its latest two high profile offerings were both eclipsed by a horror movie.

The Conjuring, which cost just $20 million (£13 million) to make and features no A-list stars, proved far more popular with audiences than R.I.P.D. starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, and the animated film Turbo, which also featured Reynolds' voice. Each of those films had production budgets of around $130 million.

Success for The Conjuring was a further blow to the strategy Hollywood studios have employed of pushing so-called "tent pole" action films, which have huge budgets but need large audiences to make profits.

It also offered further evidence of how tens of millions of dollars spent on marketing those films can be wiped out in an instant as fans' negative reactions to a film spread on social media.